The Path of an Impressionist

He was the only artist to take part in all eight Impressionist exhibitions: Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) is a central figure of the influential art movement. The prolific painter, of whom over 1300 oil paintings are known, was primarily interested in everyday rural life. He placed a greater focus on people and their actions than Claude Monet (1840-1926), for example, with whom Pissarro was close friends. Pissarro's work continues to reveal social utopian ideas influenced by his sympathy for anarchism. In the exhibition The Honest Eye: Camille Pissarro's Impressionism, the Museum Barberini is bringing together over 100 paintings by the artist from its own collection and loans from around 50 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The show runs from June 14 to September 28 in Potsdam, and will then be on display at the Denver Art Museum from October 26.

Pissarro was born on the Caribbean island of Saint Thomas, which at the time was part of the Danish West Indies. At the age of 25, he came to Paris to fulfill his dream of a life as a painter. He initially became a pupil of Camille Corot, but Pissarro strove to break away from realism. Later, Pissarro was one of the decisive forces that led to the organization of the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. Pissarro is regarded as a decisive role model for the great Post-Impressionists Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh.